Stewardship

Much has been taught in Christian circles about the principles of stewardship. Most often, the word ‘stewardship’ is used to address how a believer handles finances. But in the text today, we see a more important aspect of the stewardship assignment God has given to each of His children. It is the stewardship of those people God has placed in our lives. In our text, we see that we are stewards of three different things: our gifts, each other, and the grace of God.

When we are born again and filled with the Spirit, we each are gifted with at least one gift of the Spirit. But we also have our innate gifts and abilities placed there by God when He formed us in our mothers’ wombs. God calls us to steward all these gifts for His glory. We are to use these gifts to serve others.

We are also stewards of those the Lord places in our lives – our families, our friends, but even our enemies. We should not only use our gifts to bless each other. Just two verses before our text today, the Apostle Peter exhorts us to love one another, and ‘cover’ each other’s faults (verse 8). And shortly afterwards, in verse 14, Peter even encourages us to rejoice in suffering when our enemies attack us because of our decision to follow Jesus.

But perhaps the greatest challenge of stewardship reflected in our text today is that we are stewards of the grace of God. It is hard to imagine how the Creator of the Universe has entrusted us to be living expressions of His grace. This is a sobering thought. Do we steward His grace in a manner that expresses to others the inexplicable love and mercy wrapped up in that simple five letter word? This is a high calling. In fact, it is only through His grace can we express His grace.

Indeed, our stewardship calling is so much greater than merely what we do with the things God gives us. Things only matter as they relate to how we treat one another – and even how we treat our enemies. This is the real test of stewardship. Are we loving those God has put into our lives in a manner that expresses the many aspects of the grace of God? Let’s steward the people God has put in our lives, so that when we see Him, He can unequivocally say, “Well done, good and faithful steward.”